Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce

Russian meatballs (or “tefteli” how they are called in Russia) are prepared from ground beef and rice mix and cooked under some kind of sauce. They usually have big size (1 or 2 meatballs is enough for a serving).

This is a recipe for “tefteli” my mom uses: big meatballs, dipped into flour, then fried over in some oil and cooked with vegetable sauce (carrots, tomatoes, onions and dill) until ready.

I’ve modified recipe a bit to use freshly pureed tomatoes instead of tomato paste. However, if you don’t have fresh tomatoes under your hands, you can use canned tomatoes or tomato paste diluted with water.

How to prepare, step-by-step:

Bring a cooking pot of salted water to boil, add rice and boil it until half-ready over slow simmering, then drain it in colander and set aside to cool down a bit (find here more tips if needed): Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 2

Take another cooking pot with water and bring to boil. Cut each tomato skin crosswise and put them to the boiling water for 5 mins. Then drain water and set tomatoes aside to cool down: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 3

Then start cooking carrot and tomato vegetable sause. For that warm up big skillet with 2-3 table spoons of oil over moderate heat. Peel onions, slice them in half circles, move them to skillet and fry until light brown in color and soft; stir from time to time: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 4

Skin carrots and grate them on big slots of grater; add crated carrots to onions on the skillet, mix and braise vegetables together for 8-10 mins: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 5

Scoop a bit of meat and rice mixture with a tablespoon and form meatball using your hands (if meat keeps sticking to your hands wet them with cold water). Repeat for the rest of the meat: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 14

Warm up a skillet with 2-3 tablespoons of oil. Pour flour to small bowl and deep meatball into it: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 15

Repeat for several meatballs and put the to the warmed up skillet: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 16

Fry each meatball from each side just until they gain nice looking skin: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 17

Take a cast iron pot (or any other pot which is big enough to fit all meatballs in one layer); drop several pepper corns and bay leaves on the bottom of it: Meatballs with Carrot-Tomato Sauce Recipe: Step 18

Mom makes meatballs like this, without the sauce, but she adds fried choped onion and dill into the minced meat. By the way I realised that we probably named them after the russian name “tefteli” , we call them in romanian, “chiftele” 🙂 Also, I grew up with many of your recipes like the “borsh” (in romanian “borş”) blini (clatite), meatballs(chiftele), cabbage rolls(sarmale)etc., without knowing what country they were from; I even remember a drink from my grandmother called “braga” which resembles a lot with te “kvas” I tasted during a holyday in Russia…when I was only a child I… Read more »

Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria and other countries are soo close neighbors, at some points of time some lands were belong to different countries, which made the cultural exchange (and culinary one too) pretty easy. And I think it is pretty hard to say what country recipe belongs to, so I guess mine definitions I have listed in recipes I more like a “what I think it is” not that it really is 🙂

Reply

4 years ago

Ilona

i thought i am the only one that makes meatballs with cooked rice… I love the pictures… I make the sauce too except we add bell pepper as well, but i like your version better.. Will definitely give this a try. Thanks for the recipe.. Just started following your blog and there are so many things i want to try 🙂